Category Archives: Reviews

Ride Success, Technology Fail – Weekend #August150 Miles

By 7 commentsCycling Challenges, Reviews, Rides, , , , , ,

When the weekend began, I thought I still had an outside chance of achieving the August150 target, so I mapped a 20+ mile ride with a bit of a challenge thrown in: a nice, big hill.  I rode out of Rochdale through Whitworth to Bacup, then over Sharney Ford to Todmorden and back home along Rochdale Canal, the National Cycle Network’s Route 66.

Ride Success!

The slow climb from Rochdale to the top of Britannia (about 8 miles?) was okay.  None of it gets steep and it’s just a case of keeping the legs turning and not getting too bored.  The scenery isn’t nice until you get to Facit where you discover that there is, in fact, a Fudge Village there.  A whole Village, of Fudge? I kid you not.  Sorry I didn’t get a picture but I’m diabetic so I didn’t stop. Sod you lot who can eat what you like 😉

There’s a nice quick drop into Bacup centre then before turning right into a helluva hill.  I admit, I got off twice on the way up and walked a bit.  As I was getting back in the saddle after my second breather, a girl on a yellow bike wearing cutoff jeans, with her mp3 player wired into her ears, pedalled past me slowly but purposefully and in a much higher gear than I was spinning.  If that was you, good on yer!  It’s a good job I don’t have any illusions of masculine superiority, that’s all I can say.  I’d have sulked right then!

Then…. Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!

The drop down into Todmorden is brilliant!  A nice wide, fairly gravel-free, very steep tarmac road all the way down the hill.  Without a turn of the pedals I hurtled towards Tod, collecting flies on my grinning teeth and with tears being blown from my eyes into my ears.  What fun!  Oh, and I passed the girl who’d pedalled past me earlier.  Did I mention how fearless boys are on bikes, compared to girls? 😉

From Tod, the ride home was a leisurely affair, with the grin plastered firmly on face until my gadj let me down.

Technology Fail

Fail 1:  Solar Battery. A few weeks ago I bought a solar battery from dealextreme.  Now, I know that their stuff is a bit shonky, but I’d tested this thing once by putting it on the windowsill for a bit, then attaching it to my phone and I definitely witnessed it giving life to my phone’s battery.  Definitely.

About 2 miles back towards Rochdale, I noticed my phone was running low.  At 20% battery my GPS automatically switches off, so I pulled the solar backup from my pocket, connected the usb cable and plugged it in.  Nothing. Wiggled the connections.  Nothing. Swore. Still nothing.  Shonky far eastern piece of poo.

Fail 2:  Phone Handlebar Mount. This is the 2nd time my HTC HD2 phone mount from Mobile Fun has broken.  Last time it was the bit that cradles the actual phone that gave in, and full credit to Mobile Fun for replacing it despite not being able to find a paper-trail for my purchase.

This time, I was bobbling along a short stretch of cobbles on the towpath when the main mount fell apart.  It turns out that a bolt is moulded into the mount and not enough plastic covers it, so the bolt wobbled its way out of the assembly under repeated … erm .. use.  Yes, use: just normal riding a bike.  So I’m not happy and I’m not sure how I’m going to attach my phone from now on.  I can’t replace the unit now that I know the design is flawed, because the next time my phone parts company with my bike it might not land on a friendly surface.  Shonky far eastern piece of poo (2).  Until I’ve devised and engineered a marvellous new mount contraption, it’s going to have to stay in my pocket and I won’t be able to see how I’m doing on the fly.

Not ideal.

All I can say is: thank goodness it didn’t fail at 38mph on the descent into Todmorden.  Yep, 38mph, my all-time fastest record so far, woop woop!  I am chuffed about that despite the gadget failures.

I have no full  stats since my phone gps tracker did indeed shut down at about 16 miles, but I rode 22.88 miles in total (completed map on this link) and achieved a maximum speed of 38.3 mph.

I didn’t mention my new Daypack at all, did I?  I picked it up from Go Outdoors for £22.50 which was an absolute bargain, in my opinion.  I wore it for the first time on this ride and although I needed to fiddle with it a bit for fit comfort, it was great. Comfy, easy to drink from and felt light on my back.  It’s got a 2 litre bladder plus a bit more storage for gubbins and a nice little drop-your-helmet-here bit for when you’re walking about (which I didn’t, so I don’t know if that bit works well yet).  I’ll review it a bit more when I’ve used it again, perhaps.

With some luck, I’ll get a few miles in tonight but the August150 is looking a long way away for me! 🙁

Free Stuff – Gotta Love It

By 14 commentsReviews, Rides, ,

Free Cycling Jacket

A few weeks ago I subscribed to Mountain Bike Rider magazine.  I could pretend that it was for the pull-out route maps; the skills advice; the workshop articles… but to be honest, there are two reasons for me subscribing:

  1. 10% off the cover price.
  2. A FREE Altura Nevis cycling jacket.
I love free stuff, I do.

Smug Man in Free Altura Nevis Jacket.

The jacket’s last year’s model I believe, but it’s a cracking windstopper, and waterproof too.  The reflective bits on the front (as you can see here) and on the bumflap will be helpful and this used to retail at more than £50.  It cost me less than hat to subscribe to a magazine I was going to buy anyway, so I’m a winner! Hurrah for me.

Check Out My Cherries!

While I’m on a cheapo tip, look at these babies:

Tommies!

Virtually Free Cherry Tomatoes-In-Waiting

Regular readers will know about my £7-greenhouse-£25-base exploits.  Well, this propagator is full of seeds we dried out from actual cherry tomatoes, stolen from a salad.  They’re growing, actually growing and everything, which is cool.

They should be ready for transplanting outside before too long, then later in the summer we can have lots and lots of cherry tomatoes.  Salads; sauces; pizza; barbecues; soups… I’m going to be heartily sick of cherry toms by autumn but it’s pretty cool for the kids to witness.

Next year I think I should try to grow amusing-shaped vegetables. Any ideas what’s good to grow?

Target Update – Not Great News

By 7 commentsReviews, Rides, , ,

Time for Some Honesty

At the beginning of 2010, I wrote a post which aroused a fair bit of interest.  In it, I said I was going to train and complete the Great Manchester Run this weekend.  Well, to cut a long story short, I’m not running.

I broke a rib earlier this year and missed 5 weeks of running.  After the 5 week break I realised that I wasn’t going to get fit enough to do 10km this Sunday, so I’ve bottled.  The only silver lining is that I’ve raised an extra £20 for Mum’s hospice by selling the ticket on.

So there you go. I’m not proud, but I know I can’t run 10k on Sunday so I’m not going to try.  Running’s never been my forte so I think I should stick to the bike from now on.  I won’t belittle my fail, it’s a big one.

Back To The Bike

Number One Son did his distance running PE lesson on Thursday, so his little legs were aching over the weekend.  Nevertheless, we headed out for a ride.  All I can say is that exactly 10 miles later I was very proud of his efforts.  We used almost all the gears but he didn’t stop once (except for our tea break and a pee).  Top riding, sunshine. 🙂

Our Weekend Bike Ride

Nice loop around Hollingworth Lake and through Milnrow.

i-gotU @trip GPS Device

I bought Number One Son the i-gotU device for his birthday and this was its first trip in anger.  I have to say I was well impressed.  It’s a simple little GPS point marker but it also allows you to waymark points where you take photos, to load those photos to a page on the @-trip website when you load up the track data.

The beauty is in the @trip software that comes with the device, and the web page where your trails are stored.  He can now save his trails, share them with his mates and show off accordingly.  We have a little learning to do but on first impressions I’m impressed.  Check out his first tracked ride here.  Sorry about all the bogus photo points: it was in his pocket – must sort out that mount properly…  The 3D view is great if you’re 12!

I might head out to get those final 1.8 miles towards the 100 mile marker tonight.  Fingers crossed…

Cycling Kit Haul

By 12 commentsReviews, Rides, ,

Yesterday, Joby stuck a big Aldi advert on his blog which saved me a fortune.

I’ve read a few blogs by the ladies where there are regular posts following uncontrolled shopping expeditions.  These “Haul” entries seem to exist primarily to ease the inevitable feelings of post-purchase dissonance and to garner positive reinforcement of ill-considered decisions from internet friends…

.. so I thought “Brilliant! I’m going to do one of those!“.

My Aldi Haul.

After picking up my little girl from school, I reminded myself where Aldi was (I get them and Lidl mixed up all the time) and dragged her along as my unwilling accomplice.  This is what I got:

That little lot cost me £33.00 !  How’s that for a bargain?  Not bad considering, as has been pointed out, that a new top at Evans is about £40.00.

I’m chuffed.  I suggest you get down to your nearest Aldi and see if there’s anything decent left, this instant. Tell ’em Phill sent you! 🙂

My Phone Died – Backup Tools For Windows Mobile

By 10 commentsReviews, ,

Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrggghh!

Yesterday my phone, with no respect for the faith I have showed in it, collapsed. As I worked quietly away at my desk, it shut itself down, then got half way through starting itself back up before giving up.

This cardboard was more useful than my HTC HD2 yesterday

The screen I actually saw was less useful than this.

Following 10 minutes or so of incredulous ranting, I gathered my thoughts and considered my options.  I had one, really: a full reset and rebuild.  At this point I was very grateful for the backup utilities I’ve been using.

Backup Tools For Windows Mobile

Microsoft have developed a rather excellent little mobile phone backup utility for WinMob phones.  Microsoft My Phone is a free tool, capable of backing up your whole phone contents except software.  I’d recommend it for all WinMob users, because it can even backup your music and photos, whether on the storage card or on the phone memory.  It also keeps all your SMS & MMS  messages, which can be an absolute boon if you need to keep records of some of your text conversations.  If you don’t often take your personal files off the phone (which I do but you might not), this might be the only place you can find them if your phone gets nicked.

At work we run Exchange Server, so we use Activesync to make sure our phones are up to date with all emails; contacts; appointments; tasks and so on.  Since the two tools are both Microsoft, they make sure they don’t rip on each others’ toes so duplicates are avoided.

Success!

Thanks to having already used these two utilities, I managed to repopulate my phone with all the information that was on it before it had a wobbly.  Using the My Phone tool, I archived 2000 texts to the web, thus avoiding the memory problems that probably caused the meltdown in the first place.

Don’t Lose Your Software

A word to the wise…. if you install 3rd party software on your Windows Mobile device, keep the Registration Keys on record.  If (when?) you have to rebuild the phone, the software will be lost along with all other data held on the handset.  If you’re working from the storage card, that should be ok but don’t leave it to chance.

I’ve had to reinstall 2 pieces of software and have needed to punch in the Product Registration Keys for both of them.  In the worst case, you might have to pay again to use something you’ve already paid for.  Don’t get caught out.

Now What?

After an hour or so wasted rebuilding my little friend, I’ve calmed down a bit.  I think I’m ready for the abusive comments from iPhone users now 😉

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